Tracking the COVID-19-Virus in Germany, the USA, Italy and other hot spots in the world

But they haven't changed their policies. Neither has Japan.

The Red Chinese are responsible for spreading the virus and lying about how contagious it was. They are responsible for 95% of the current and ongoing global deaths.

 

You are not claiming to read minds and predict the future ??

Fauchi doesn't pull punches.

 

I thought that for some Easter Sunday reading (and @gnoib is going to like this) I would go into detail about one of the most intensive COVID-19 flashpoints in Europe and how it happened. I think that when you are done reading this, you will send out a thought of thanks to the country of Iceland, which kept this pandemic from being even worse than it is. Thanks, Iceland, you saved us about 2 weeks time.

So, here we go.

This is the little-bitty ski-village called "Ischgl" (Ish-gul), population circa 1,600, in Austria. The saying in Ischgl (in English) is: "Relax, if you can":



That's the close-up google maps look at a small, rectangular village that the highway (or better put, state route) 189 goes through. You see the 200 meter scale at the bottom right of the screenshot. It is less than one mile to drive through the entire village. The very thin red and dark brown curvy lines you see are the cable-car routes for the lifts that get the skiers to the top of the mountain to do their skiing.

After WWII, this part of Austria was dirt poor and Ischgl was a pretty much forgotten place. But one of the town's elders came up with the idea to build the first modern, post-war cable-car lift (Seilbahn) in Austria and not long thereafter, the economy in little Ischgl was booming because as the economic wonder started to take place in post-WWII West Germany, well-to-do Germans wanted to start doing winter skiing vacations again. And out of 1 ski-lift would become 45.

But this little google maps view is too restrictive, there is still a lot to learn here. So, a larger view:



The scale has gone from 200 Meters to 2 KM in the legend at the bottom right. Though it's hard to make out yet from this map, Ischgl is very, very close to the border with both Switzerland and northern Italy. In fact, the cable-car lifts are a cooperation between Ischgl on the Austrian side to lifts in Samnaun on the Swiss side. You see that the 188 (highway, or state route, depending on how you want to look at it) goes through a swath of green. That is the somewhat lower elevations between two mountain ranges, one on the north and one to the south, where you can build a decent road. You can also see that Ischgl is not the only skiing paradise here. To the east of it is "Wirl" which also has it's own cable-car lifts in connection to a site (also on the other side of the Swiss border). Ischgl is in a region called "Tirol" which spans this part of Austria and part of northern Italy. In Austria, Tirol is officially a province and where it stretches into Italy, it is called "Trentino" The Tiroler really are kind of a different folk. They, on both sides, speak at least three languages: Tirolisch (a dialect of German), Italian and some, Rätoromanisch. In fact, the name "Ischgl" comes from Rätoromanisch (one of the 5 national languages of Switzerland) and means "small island".

So, let's zoom a little farther out in order to see exactly where Ischgl is:



Here you can see that little Ischgl (the red point to the right of Liechtenstein) is in the south-east tip of Austria, just a few short kilometers from the Swiss border directly to the south and just a number of kilometers more to the 3-way border between Austria, Switzerland and Italy. You can see from the map that the entire eastern half of Austria, all of Switzerland and most of northern Italy are all very mountainous. You can also see that Ischgl is geographically much closer to the capital city of Bern in Switzerland, Mailand or Venice in Italy or Munich in Germany than it is to the actual capital city of Austria (Wien). So, we are talking about a region of Austria and northern Italy that has been somewhat autonomous. (In fact, NW Italy is officially autonomous). It's easy to fly into Innsbruck from either München, Wien, Mailand, Venedig, Rome, Lyon or Bern and then in just about one hour by car from Innsbruck, you are in Ischgl.

So, in many ways, it's perfectly located and one of those places that stays pretty cold all year long. They get lots of snow there in the winter, yadayadayada. And after the fall of the Soviet Union, the expansion of the EU and freedom in the former East Block countries, places like Ischgl have become a favorite place for the upper middle-class and upper class to vacation and schmooze, also such from places like Serbia, Croatia, the Czech Republic.

But there has always been a deep tie between the small Ischgls of Austria and northern Italy because they are part of this larger region called Tirol that spans both parts of both countries. The mountain-folk of these three nations tend to hang together.

BTW, if the strange form of Austria looks a little familiar to you, look this map of part of the USA and you will see what I mean:



So, how does Iceland come into all of this? Ischgl has enough hotel beds for about 12,000 people on any one given night. About 1.7 million tourists ski in Ischgl throughout the year, but January (Jänner) and Febuary are the main ski-vacation months.

So, as COVID-19 was breaking out, Iceland was one of the first nations outside of China and South Korea to already start testing. On February 29th, 15 skiers from a tour-group out of Iceland tested postive when they landed in Rekyavik. The icelandic authorities quarantined the 15 (and the rest of the plane complement) and informed Tirol immediately. Tirol sat on the information for about a week and did nothing, because they didn't want to lose tourism in their second heaviest week (End of February, beginning of March). Because of this, starting on March 4th, 2020, Iceland put everyone who was flying back from Tirol, via any possible route, on automatic quarantine. Tirol tried to lie about this and claimed that those 15 were all infected on the Munich outbound flight from a bunch of rich folks out of North Italy, which is mathematically not possible. It takes a couple of days from infection to go from asymptomatic to symptomatic on a test. Only first as the newspaper "THE STANDARD" published a large front page article claiming that many hundreds of people from Ischgl were testing positive once they got back to their homelands did the Tirolean authorities give up and start to tell the truth, but then it was too late. I'm not aware of Ischgl or Saumnan or Wirl being hotspots for Chinese businessmen just dying to put on skis and do the slopes, but there are just tons of German, Italian, Swiss, Austrian, British, French and Spanish businessmen who have dealings in the far East who do, and this is likely where the connection is. Also, many people from Ischl themselves are claiming that the first COVID-19 tests were bogus, that all people did at the beginning was to check their fever at that was that. Also, the highest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths are coming out of Tirol.

Because of what happened, there are now class-action lawsuits against a number of people in Tirol, from the Governor of Tirol to the the Mayor of Ischgl to the people to run the 45 ski-lifts there, because they put no restrictions into place.

The Robert Koch Institute in Germany (the German equivalent of the CDC) has reported that at least 2,200 infections out of Ischgl made their way back to Germany in the last two weeks of February. Some of them were a Group from Heinsberg in North-Rhein-Westfalia, which became the flashpoint for the pandemic here.

Here is a documentary that just came out about Ischgl, put out by the Bayerische Rundfunk. It had actually been made to highlight the ski-resort at the end of March for tourism in the next year and then COVID-19 happened, so they turned it into a doku on the disease itself:



I don't think there are English undertitles this time around, but maybe it would still give a good impression of this ski-resort, how very modern things are these days.

Also, from Zeller's DER VOGELHÄNDLER, the best known song out of the region, called "Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol" ( one gives Roses as a gift in Tirol):



Enjoy,

Stat

 

Peculiar comparison of Canada vs U.S. you posted.

Canada's population is approximately equal to California's population at just under 40 million each, but Canada obviously has a lot more land for that population.

It would be more appropriate to compare Canada at 23,700 cases with California at 22,400 cases.

 

From about 10 minute ago, the total COVID-19 numbers:




Also, the deaths, per nation, up to this point in time today:



Full analysis in 4 hours, at the end of my day. But note that Indonesia, the Phillipines and Mexico are posting more daily deaths than Germany.

 

How the Austrian handled Ischgil is criminal.
All initial cases in my home town Kassel, were skiing in the area around Ischgil.

Something similar happened in Elsas Lothringen. A international church festival spread the virus all over Europe and made Elsas the early hot spot in France​

 

the 56 hour curfew in the Navajo Reservation, which started Friday 8pm, has made Cortez CO a ghost town

 

It's not a dream if we start moving on it now. Think of all the mass consumption items we all use frequently--we can make N95 masks in quantity if we tool up for them and get on with it.

If we aren't ready for other waves of disease, and we don't have a cure or a vaccine, we could be back in lockdown. Fer crissake, let's prepare.

 

That’s good. I thought he might croak!

 

Something isn't computing. People are saying that they're following the social distancing, yet the cases keep increasing. So, is this really "flattening" any curves, or to your point I think about a month or so ago: Is it even possible at this point to flatten the curve?

I think we need to just...live with this thing. It's here, we can't stop it. All we're doing is delaying the inevitable, if after perfect closings etc we're still getting sick.

 

Why hasn't the government pulled out all the stops to get them made? What in the hell is Trump doing? Why isn't Joe Biden putting on pressure to make protective equipment for hospital workers, other people dealing with the public, and then for the rest of us. We need to be ready to snuff out future waves.

This is FUBAR.

 

I've wondered the same, looking at Italy who has been in lockdown since March 9th and they are still getting 4 to 5K new cases daily.

 

Yes. And Japan is doing the minimum and adding ~ 700 cases per day.

 

Has it occurred to you to Google something along the lines of "companies making n95 masks" ?

You seem to be tilting at windmills on this topic. All the stops are being pulled to produce masks and respirators.

 

Regardless of the posture taken, all East Asian countries (regardless of form of government, or population) have done much better statistically than those in Europe. With the benefit of hindsight, Iran is somewhere in the middle between them. In fact, statistically, among the East Asian countries, the worst one has been South Korea.

I see reports in the US that the Coronavirus has hit African Americans harder proportionally. While the proportionally greater impact on African Americans in the US can be explained away by some other factors, that difference would still pale in comparison to the huge statistical difference between mortality rates (including deaths per million population) between European countries and those in East Asia. This is not the same as the example of certain countries in the southern hemisphere, or in poorer regions of the world, which are either being shielded by weather conditions or lack of infrastructure to properly report cases. In fact, we aren't even talking about countries which haven't had a 'substantial enough' number of cases for a 'substantial enough' time. Besides the fact that the pandemic all started in China, and South Korea was one of the first to be hit hard, even Japan has been dealing with enough cases for some time now since February. Yet, for a country that has reports of death from the virus all the way back in February, and which has been consistently reporting new deaths from the virus since then, their total deaths are still just 108, or less than 1 per million population (0.9).

Anyway, I think this point merits more careful focus and study.

 

There is a similar investigation being done in the UK on the deaths of nurses and doctors. There has been disproportionately more deaths of Middle Eastern and Asian staff.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52242856

 

We're testing a lot more after getting off to a very slow testing start. So we get more "confirmed cases" the more we test. Overall, we are, so far, not putting excessive stress on the healthcare system in terms of hospital beds and ventilators, so that's a win.

And the curve is flattening. It has taken 9 days from the number of cases to move from 900k to 1.8M. Cases were doubling much faster than that just a few weeks ago.

Anyway, case rates are less important than hospitalization rates. We're testing a lot more people now who do not need to be hospitalized than previously, when we only had enough tests for people who were really very sick already.

 

I noticed that just by the picture you had posted of doctors and nurses that had fallen victim to the virus in the UK, but the issue I am raising is different. Basically, I am suggesting that there might be a genetic component to this virus that East Asians are better protected against. The differences among the other communities, while noticeable in isolation, isn't really stark when you look at the picture more generally. And those differences are things I can at least conceive being more related to other factors than genetics, especially since elsewhere in Europe (Italy, Spain etc) you don't see much distinction in that regard. And since, other than Iran (whose numbers are better than Europe but worse than East Asia), you don't have as many cases elsewhere in the Middle East. Or very few reported in South Asia (India, Pakistan etc).

So, basically, I am still mostly curious about the East Asian issue!

 

Diet and lifestyle likely plays a role. Japan has the oldest population in the world.

Italy has the Mediterranean Diet, but that pertains to southern Italy. The people in the northern Lombard region eat a lot of butter, lard, pork, cheese and salty cured pork meats. Tasty, but not too healthy when it comes to high blood pressure and heart disease.



(9. and 10. in that article are that they enjoy themselves more, and are very health conscious.)

 

There are 3 issues which, I personally, believe aren't as dispassionately and properly investigated as they should be.
The first one I alluded to, namely the possibility of a genetic market that better helps East Asians dealing with this virus. Finding such a marker, I assume, could also help finding more clues in treating and coming up with prognosis for the virus.

The second one is a more careful focus on the 'level of exposure' to the virus, as opposed to simply being exposed and testing positive. In fact, I would like an additional test that only registers a positive result when the level of exposure is greater than a certain level, carefully following up on the progress of these cases to see how they compare to people with lower exposure.

The third one has received a lot of attention, but much of it is unfortunately skewed by politics and political considerations. I would give more attention to not just the 'herd immunity' concept, but the overall dynamics which see the spread of the virus significantly slowed once it reaches a certain percentage of the community. A case in point, for instance, is how the virus spread rapidly on the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, but after a certain point, it seemed to spread much more slowly, despite an aircraft carrier being the last place you would expect could implement 'social distancing'.

 

Not enough, not nearly enough.

And California is doing better than the U.S. as a whole. In fact, the entire West Coast--California, Oregon, and Washington--have kept down their numbers.

 

Diet might be significant, but to be sure, it is NOT just Japan. Across the board in East Asia, the mortality/deaths per million population, are simply far lower than elsewhere. In fact, South Korea (the model for proactive measures) has the worst statistics compared to the rest in East Asia (even if its statistics would be very much the envy of everywhere else hit by this virus).

 

*1,847,095*
+73,815 cases today over yesterday
Almost 114,000 COVID-19 deaths worldwide.
1,379 Americans died from COVID-19 today.​

At end of my day, 11:59 PM on April 12th, 2020 (GMT +2), here the COVID-19 numbers:



It should be noted that Worldmeters hung at these numbers from 23:21 EDT +2 until 00:00 (which I recorded as 23:59). That is the longest pause I have seen in their numbers since I have been watching them.

Today, we came in just at the 1.85 million mark; 10 days ago, we shot over the 1 million mark. So, that's 850,000 cases in 9 days. Most likely, we will arrive at or cross over the 2 million mark on Tuesday.

BTW, this is where we were one month ago, on March 12, 2020.

The mortality rate (number of total deaths / number of total confirmed COVID-19 cases) moved upward to 6.17% (It was 6.12% yesterday at EOD). That is an enormously high death rate, which has moved incrementally from 3.41% when I began tracking the numbers on 02/27 to now over 6%. That is more than 2.8% jump in the death rate in 6 weeks time and also the second day in a row where we have seen a 6% mortality rate.


The Excel-Table:



We saw +73,815 new cases today, as compared to yesterday over the day before (+82,783). The growth rate was 4.16%. Yesterday, the growth rate was 4.90%. That is considerably less cases than yesterday, a good sign, perhaps.

In terms of deaths: 113,902 total, +5,425 today over yesterday, making for a 5.00% growth rate (yesterday: 5.94%). And of course, the death rate, as already noted above, was: 6.17% That is circa 1,500 less deaths than yesterday, also a good sign.

The % of recovered people rose from 22.64% yesterday to 22.87% at EOD today. The recovery percentage continues to rise incrementally. This tells me that more and more cases are being resolved. But since the death rate is also rising, the cases are being resolved in one of two ways, which we already know will happen, but the intensity of this phase of the pandemic, namely, resolution, after having reached a low point twice, is climbing again.

And per country, most of the countries, first per total cases, (1,000 cases or above):





There are now 71 nations in the "thousand club, with Armenia and Bosnia/Herzegovinia having passed the 1,000 line . Of those 71, 20 are now in the "10,000 club" (Sweden just went over the 10,000 mark) and 5 of them are at 100,000 or more (USA, Spain, Italy Germany and France). Russia is now at 15,770 cases, but the actual number of case there may be 50-70 times higher. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and North Macedonia are up next to cross the 1,000 line, either tomorrow or Monday. Turkey has shot up to 57,000 cases; at this rate, Turkey will surge past China within the next 8 days. India is at 9,000 cases, whereas Pakistan is at 5,200. Both countries are very obviously lying about their COVID-19 problem, and brazenly, at that. Brasil has jumped from 19,700 to 22,000 cases.

And here, first per new deaths today, in descending numerical order, then in total deaths, also descending.




The USA and the UK had the most deaths to mourn:


The USA had the most deaths today: 1,379 yesterday, it was 1,719. UK reported 737. Those are absolutely horrific numbers, but for the second day in a row, they are better than the day before.


The curve is definitely starting to flatten, which means a possible plateau-phase. The doubling is definitely slowing down some. I see signs that the curve is no longer exponential, but rather, logistic. However, right now, it could take off again. So, caution in analysis is advisable.

-Stat

 

Oh, the curve is most definitely flattening, for the growth rate in total cases and the growth rate in deaths - both are now decidedly under +10%, a sign that exponential growth can be downsized to logistical growth, a very good sign.

 

Yes, Governors Newsom, Inslee, and Brown implemented the CDC's recommendations earlier than other governors like Cuomo and Edwards...and it shows. They deserve kudos as strong leaders.